I decided to take off work tomorrow to go snowboarding. I prefer to go on a weekday to avoid the lift lines. It does tend to be harder to persuade friends to go with me during the week, but that's understandable. Or is it? When someone says "I can't", is that really true? No, they were physically capable of going. So why would they say they couldn't go? Maybe they didn't want to go. Maybe abdicating decision-making power is their way of short-circuiting any attempt by me to persuade them. Maybe "I can't" is linguistic shorthand for "I have evaluated my options and determined that it's not the best one". (If that's the case, the English language probably needs a new word that lacks the moral implications of "shouldn't"... maybe "optn't"?) But more likely, it was an automatic reflex rather than a carefully deliberated decision.
Why would people choose to avoid making such decisions? Because they think that if they don't make a choice that they can't make a mistake? Because continually rethinking every possible option at every instant would result in mental fatigue? Because it's unpleasant to think about the sacrifices that the current you makes to benefit future yous?
Commitments, obligations, responsibilities... on the surface these all feel like either yes or no, you have it or you don't, and if you have it then it trumps everything else, and is not something to be weighed in the balance with other considerations. Granted, sometimes people really have no choice, and a certain course of action is absolutely necessary. And if you make a promise to do something, you should honor that commitment, even if it limits your decision-making power (which means that you should not make such commitments lightly). But in other circumstances, when you feel that you have only one choice, you should double-check to make sure that you really only have one option, because you might have other options that you automatically assumed weren't viable but which might be.
As a small business owner, it is both easier and harder for me to take a day off. Easier because no one can tell me I can't go. Harder because it's more expensive for me to take a day off. Even if I'm not a wage slave, I'm still a slave to the business model. But above moderate affluence the marginal value of each additional dollar declines in its ability to positively impact one's happiness, and realizing this has given me a degree of freedom I wouldn't have had otherwise. I sometimes take off a day of work just to exercise my autonomy, and to remind myself that it's within my power to do so, even when the temptation is to think that it isn't.
I hope to see you on the slopes, if not tomorrow, then some other weekday.